UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — In April 2026, Penn State announced it was in the early stages of transitioning from Starfish to Navigate360 as its enterprise student success tool. In cooperation with Penn State's Navigate360 team, vendor EAB made significant progress over the summer. Many new features of the updated system have been confirmed for use upon implementation, still slated for the 2027-28 academic year.
Navigate360 is a CRM (customer relationship management) and support platform designed specifically for higher education to help institutions to coordinate and strategically strengthen retention and student success efforts. Navigate360 streamlines communication between students and the wide range of people supporting them, enables easy appointment scheduling with critical support services, and gives data informed insight into the holistic student experience.
Over the last several months, core members of the Starfish and Navigate360 team have been working with EAB to bring live data into the Navigate360 implementation site and explore new capabilities. The transition to Navigate360 is being managed deliberately in consultation with a range of University stakeholders and without disruption to existing services. Because Starfish and Navigate360 are both EAB technologies, Penn State will retain access to Starfish throughout the implementation period.
According to Janet Schulenberg, Division of Undergraduate Studies director and Starfish and Navigate360 initiative lead, the team has already seen how Navigate360’s features can benefit the University community.
“Our team is excited to roll out new features that will help faculty and staff collaborate to support students in becoming better learners,” said Schulenberg. “We’ll have customizable, user-friendly dashboards that accurately reflect the students with whom they work, with the most important and timely information for each student at the top.”
Navigate360 will expand on Starfish, with improved features for student outreach and engagement, including:
- opt-in text messaging for students
- staff automated outreach campaigns
- an app for students with push notifications in addition to web browser access
Reporting is another area where staff will see improved functionality when compared to Starfish, according to Schulenberg.
“We’ll be able to give reporting access to the staff who have responsibility for program-level assessments and decision-making, unlike with Starfish where all reporting had to be done centrally.”
An important, early decision in the implementation was that Navigate360 will incorporate student success dimensions such as curriculum and pedagogy; academic guidance and support; community, belonging, and student advocacy; experiential learning and career development; student success strategy, analytics, operations, and more.
“Student success goes beyond grade-point average and graduation,” said David Smith, executive director of the Division of Undergraduate Studies. “The Navigate360 implementation team is actively considering all dimensions of student success along with the many areas responsible for those objectives. This builds on the already strong success network that exists in Starfish and will actively bring in many more areas across Penn State to make Navigate360 a truly holistic student success tool.”
The Navigate360 implementation team is currently validating data and making configuration decisions in collaboration with Penn State end users and EAB consultants. Next steps include forming a governance and administration structure for both the implementation and long-term sustainability of Navigate360, as well as consulting University stakeholder groups and gathering their feedback on the available features and operation.
EAB is working with the Penn State Starfish and Navigate360 team throughout the implementation process. Led by the Division of Undergraduate Studies, the implementation team includes representatives from Penn State Learning, the College of the Liberal Arts, Penn State Altoona, Penn State World Campus, the J. Jeffrey and Ann Marie Fox Graduate School and the College of Medicine. EAB is also working with user groups, Penn State IT and representatives for other Penn State systems, including LionPATH, Canvas, Software Engineering and the Data Empowered Learning Team. Executive sponsors for the project are Kathy Bieschke, senior vice provost and interim dean of Undergraduate Education; Andrea Dowhower, vice president for Student Affairs; and Chris Lucas, deputy CIO and associate vice president for academic technologies and customer experience, Penn State Information Technology.
More information, including updates on implementation milestones and training opportunities, will be available at starfish.psu.edu/navigate360.